Chapter 21
Conn came some time later and announced his arrival by triggering the collar. I was so weak that I couldn’t move and my body jumped and twitched only because the current going through it moved the muscles. He let me flop for a good half hour before he stopped it. Opened the cage door and let himself in. He stood over me, called out and the guard brought in a chair, which he set down near the Elder.
Connacher spoke softly. “Your stubbornness is refreshing, Reuven. I did not know that Dracule’s had such control of their blood lust. You’ve gone three weeks now without food or water. A human would be dead or insane by now. Certainly, they would not have endured what you have. All you have to do is call me master. Is that so difficult? Just one little word. It means nothing but food, water, shelter. To be cared for by–.”
“Owned by you,” I interrupted painfully. “I am not a slave.”
“If you do not acknowledge me, Reuven, you will die,” he continued.
“I should live with this curse? To drink a human’s blood? How can I live like that?” I burst out.
“Yet, you are still alive. You must have come to terms with it. You are sixteen, seventeen years old? About that, I think no more. Unless you were turned in the old days. Legends say that these Dracules or vampires never age but then, you would know all about the old magics.”
“I don’t remember anything like that,” I closed my eyes and prayed he would go away but the scent of fresh blood roused me. He held out the cup filled with it.
“Here, take this. You have earned it for your courage.” Hesitantly, I tried to reach out and was too weak to move so he squatted, picked up my head and held the cup to my lips. I trembled in fear and indecision, in terrible desire and reluctance. As the first sip of blood touched my tongue, I swallowed convulsively and did not stop until the cup was empty.
My stomach roiled. My skin flushed as heat surged through me, warming and waking me. It was only animal blood, not human and not enough to heal me but it was enough to wake me to the danger I’d placed myself in.
“What was in it?” I asked as my limbs became stone. I arched my back and moaned. Sensations went through me that weren’t pain per se, but the incredible feeling of bone-deep changes that I had no control over and could not stop. I screamed at him. “What have you done to me?”
“I? I did nothing,” he smirked. “You did it to yourself. Now, call me master.”
“Master.” It was forced out of my mouth and I cried, my tears acid as they washed down my cheeks. The word came with bondage that wrapped around my heart and connected to the web that circled my body making me his stringed puppet. My mind and my will was his and I knew it. “Master.” I said in a whisper. “What would you have me do?”
“Eat. Get well and then, I will tell you what you can do for me.” He smiled and patted me on the head. “I will send food and drink. Fresh clothes and a hot bath. Once you have eaten, bathed and refreshed yourself, the guards will escort you to my workshop.”
“Yes, master,” I bowed my head. He eased me back to the cell floor but did not remove the chains. “What was in the blood, master?” I asked and this did not please him. I cringed at the black look on his face at my temerity.
“Speak not of this, Reuven,” he whispered. “For to use the powder of the Black Mushroom would condemn both of us to death should the king learn of it.”
“Yes, master.” My body had experienced too many changes and I could not remain awake. The last thing I saw was the dirtied hem of his robes as he walked away.
*****
“Psst, Tobias! Toby! Wake up!” The female Elassai Ranger was back, in the dark of night and standing just outside my cell door. I had already been visited by guards, fed, bathed and dressed in dark trousers and leather jerkin. The clothes hung on my spare frame as I was considerably lighter than when I’d awakened in Agenor’s apple shed.
“Who are you?” I asked, raising my hand to my forehead. My chains were gone but I still wore the cuffs and collar only now, both were made of gold. The runes on them moved in the feeble light.
She stood eerily still. “What? What did you say?”
I got up and approached the bars walking as if I were a feeble old man. I was alive, just barely. “I said, who are you? Who is Toby? Do you know me? Did the master send you?”
“Oh no,” she whispered. “Tobias, it’s me, Arianell. You don’t know me?”
“Arianell?” I searched my few recollections and shook my head. “No. I know Agenor, Jennessa, Connacher, the slaves at the farm and Cousin Methyl. You, I do not know.”
“I’ve come to get you out of here,” she said. Fumbling for the big key hanging on the wall, she inserted it into the lock and opened the gate. I remained where I was behind the bars and unmoving. “Come with me, Tobias,” she ordered.
“My name is Reuven,” I answered. “The master did not call me out.”
She studied me. “You do not remember me, you do not remember anything? Your name is Tobias Spencer. You are the son of Lord Spencer of Gleneden and the Lyrra Maleen Primrose, the granddaughter of Lyr Averon. You are the link between the Old World, the New and the Borders. You must come with me, Toby. Now.”
“I cannot. The master must release me,” I whispered wanting it to be true but unable to believe her. We heard the sounds of the guards returning and she opened her hands. In it was one of those tube weapons and she triggered it, hitting me on the breast over my heart. Ice enveloped me, cut me off from my senses yet I could see her tugging my hand and walking me out of the cell, down the corridor and lower into the dungeons below my own. I had thought I was on the lowest level yet it seemed this prison was deeper still. I had no awareness of anything except that my feet walked and I was connected to her by our hands. I couldn’t sense the blood running through her veins or my own. We traveled for a long time in limbo with me as a ghost in my own body. There were brief flashes of pain when I crossed barriers of magic and resistance when we came to a circle of rune stones yet she made spells that forced our way through. I didn’t know when it ended, I just found myself sitting on fallen stones in a cavern out of Hell’s nightmare.